Items such as promotional and collectable cards are used in many fields and typically comprise cards of celebrities and athletes.
An example of such an item is the baseball card. For many years, baseball cards have been available featuring a photograph or illustration of a professional player along with limited personal data such as his name and team on the front side of the card, and extensive personal and professional data on the reverse side of the card. Similar cards for other sports, such as basketball and football, are also available. Collecting and trading such cards has become a popular activity among sports fans. What had been for many years been a hobby has now become a relatively serious business in buying and selling cards. Some of these cards have become quite valuable because of their rarity or the acquired fame of the player depicted on the card. The value of rare cards has become increasingly high.
Conventional collector cards comprise images, and/or text printed directly on paper substrates by conventional printing methods. However, due to constraints in the printing process, the image quality produced is less than desirable. In the typical manner of production, printing yields grainy, low resolution images. Thus, the image quality generally obtainable is of far lower quality than available with conventional photographic paper. Conventional printing technology permits the transfer of an image through the transfer of multi-colored dyes to a paper substrate. The dyes are absorbed on contact into the paper surface leaving an image having a grainy appearance. Thus, the resolution embodied in the original image is lost, and a low quality reproduction is obtained.
Moreover, collector cards while highly priced and frequently very expensive, have no intrinsic or real value, nor are they permanent or long-lasting without a great deal of care.
It is, therefore, an object of the present invention to provide collector cards having improved resolution of image and text thereby providing individual collectable cards of greater beauty and of enhanced design.
It is a further object to provide collector cards having enhanced intrinsic value and, in particular, providing the enhanced value by replacing the paper substrate with a precious metal substrate.
It is still another object to provide a collector card of enhanced beauty and value on which the image and text is printed on clear plastic film which film is laminated on precious metal substrate.